Oscar-nominated documentarian Nathaniel Kahn tells the story of the James Webb Telescope in his new Discovery Channel Documentary Telescope. A successor to the Hubble Telescope, the Webb is potentially science’s best chance to see farther into the universe than ever before. Matt Mountain is President of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the body that oversees the science operations for that very telescope. Kahn and Mountain are joined by Paul Holdengräber to discuss how the Webb Telescope may change astronomy’s future.

NATHANIEL KAHN is an award winning filmmaker. His documentary, My Architect, about his father, architect Louis I. Kahn, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004. My Architect won the 2004 Directors Guild of America Award, for outstanding direction of a documentary. The film is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Kahn's short films include Two Hands, about the pianist Leon Fleisher, which was nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy in 2007. Kahn’s Telescope recently aired on Discovery Channel and Science Channel in February.

MATT MOUNTAIN is a renowned Astrophysicist and telescope builder, whose past career has included designing and building the Gemini Telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and on Cerro Pachon Chile, running the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA, and is the NASA appointed telescope scientist for the new James Webb Space Telescope. Mountain is the current President of The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), a not-for-profit consortium of Universities which builds and operates telescopes and observatories for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).

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